1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cleaning blade, an image forming apparatus, and a process cartridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, conventionally, a toner remained on a surface of a photoconductor after transferring a toner image to a recording medium or an intermediate transfer member is removed by a cleaning device.
As for a cleaning member in a cleaning device, a rectangular elastic body blade is typically used, as a structure of the device can be made simple. Generally, a top end of the rectangular elastic body blade is supported with a holder, and a tip ridgeline portion of the elastic body blade is pressed against a circumferential surface of the photoconductor to block the toner remained on the surface of the photoconductor. The blocked toner is scraped and dropped, to thereby remove the toner from the surface of the photoconductor.
However, the elastic body blade has problems that abrasion resistance thereof is insufficient, and cleaning failure may occur in the normal temperature environment or low temperature environment.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2013-218277 discloses a cleaning blade, which is composed of a rectangular elastic body blade, and is configured to clean a powder from a surface of a member to be cleaned by pressing a tip ridgeline portion of the elastic body blade against the moving surface of the member to be cleaned. In this cleaning blade, an area adjacent to the tip ridgeline portion is impregnated with a UV-curable resin containing a fluorine-based acrylic monomer. Moreover, surface layers harder than the elastic blade are provided to the area adjacent to at least a tip ridgeline portion of a blade bottom surface, which has the tip ridgeline portion at one side thereof and faces a member to be cleaned, and to the area adjacent to at least a tip ridgeline portion of an edge surface parallel to the thickness direction of the elastic blade. Moreover, the impregnation depth of the elastic body blade with the UV-curable resin containing the fluorine-based acrylic monomer from the edge surface is set in the range of 50 [μm] to 150 [μm], and the impregnation depth thereof from the bottom surface of the blade is set in the range of 20 [μm] to 100 [μm].
However, there is still a need for preventing cleaning failures in a low temperature environment.